The Pastorate: A Recipe for Self Importance

 GALATIONS 6:3

"For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself."

    To be in a small church in the Appalachian mountains is sometimes a one of a kind experience. Sometimes the building doesn't have AC and the windows are open, sometimes they are perched in a spot where there is just enough room for the scant membership to park in a gravel lot. Some of these families have been attending this church long enough that the church is named after them. They meet Sundays and Wednesdays and they worship. The follow their leader, the pastor. 

    Any self respecting pastor will tell you that he is following the Lord's will or, trying his best to. They are all different, some are easy going and quiet, and others are loud and arrogant. They look different, they act different, and they are all odd. Hi. I was one, and who knows I may be again. I can say this though they all have glaring problem in common. They are given authority by their people to make judgement calls that they honesty should never be given. I do believe the biblical model for pastors is good, I think that they do have some authority, but all of that authority rests in the scriptures. I have been in churches while I was growing up where the pastor was a patriarch of the family whose surname was the predominant one on the roll and he had an understood authority. I have been in churches where the pastor was controlled by the deacons, or even a few wily treasurers and there is always a power struggle. I have been in one church where the pastor started as a firebrand, and over the years has turned into a full blown cult leader, or at least very very close. The common denominator is power, and in a Baptist church, independent and fundamental or not, it is the biggest problem. 

    The bottom line when it comes to power is that leaders have it. In the dynamic between church member and pastor there should be a balance of power. We are taught that man has a dual nature, there is the natural man and there is the spiritual man, and almost every religion on the planet would agree to that. In Christianity though we are taught that the natural man is carnal and fleshly and the spiritual man in a born again believer is led by the Holy Spirit. Yet in most typical churches the pastor is given those reins too. In a church I attended things were said like this. "We pray about who gets to sing solos in the choir, we only want spiritual people singing." Yet in a choir of forty, there were only five people, the same five people that sang solos. They were not as spiritual as some might imagine, but when the pastor says a statement like that while he is preaching he is saying, we have standards, and they are spiritual and ultimately I make the call. When he does make the call he puts himself in as spiritual authority, and he takes it away from the Holy Spirit. It sounds innocent enough, he would never abuse his authority right, he would never make a bad call? Until he does. 

    I am deconstructing, I have hit a spot where for now I am comfortable sitting and waiting and  examining evidence. I have conversations about spiritual things, and honestly I would consider preaching again, and I definitely consider myself a believer. I had a hard time when pastoring making calls, not basic ones, the easy ones are no brainers and most people follow suit, but I had a hard time making calls in the form of blanket statements about sins from the pulpit. I realized through circumstances in my walk that not everyone is the same. I knew a pastor that struggled with alcohol in his past. He wasn't an alcoholic but he could have been. He takes a hard hard stand against alcohol. I have never drank a drop, and I can see the damage it can cause, but it is not an issue with me, I don't feel the need to bring it up every time I would preach. We are different, and sometimes that means that our walk is different. Peter didn't walk like Paul, and Paul certainly didn't walk the same as John. In Paul's writings you find a mind that is analytical and he dissects the issues of his day. John writes about not only completely different subjects and places emphasis on different things. Why then do pastors think that everyone thinks the same, acts the same, and conforms the same. 

    They think that because they have their own idea about how long a person needs to change that if the person takes longer, they never got saved to begin with. Furthermore some pastors have the idea that if a person does not live their life in a certain way, with a certain outcome, they are not spiritual. These pastors forget that the Holy Spirit deals with people in different ways, and at different speeds. They have forgotten that they themselves, pastors of churches, the "undershepherds", are not all knowing, all seeing, and all powerful. They are nothing. They think they are something. In my next post I talk about an incident in my life that shows the effect of this attitude firsthand.